Anthropological Speculative Fiction: The Ice of Thalassis
By Esther Stoppani 001897 The first thing I feel upon waking is the cold; the freezing-hot sensation of blood rushing…
All posts by Emma Louise Backe
Burdened with Glorious Purpose: Loki and the Hidden, Occult Power of Bureaucracy
Loki is a story about the hidden power of bureaucracy, bureaucracy’s capacity to conjure new realities through its administrative processes and even rewrite the flow of time through its minute, arcane, and often inaccessible managerial processes.
Two Archaeologists Unscientifically Argue That Ethical Practice Is Anti-Science
By April M. Beisaw, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Vassar College, NY In recent weeks, two archaeologists–Bruce Bourque and Elizabeth Weiss–have…
The Death of Outer Space Dreams: Hard Decisions and a War of Utopian Demands
“What if we found new ways of existing in the harsh places we’ve ruled out on our homeworld, before forcing ourselves into the ecosystems of others? What if we revisited the ways of the ancient sea-faring cultures and the desert nomads? Drawing inspiration not from the speculative but from the real, the here, the now, the pragmatic and the historic.”
Screen Memories, Scarlet Witch & the Complex Grief of Wandavision
“Wanda has unwittingly cast her own tribunal of witnesses, those who are forced to not only see what she’s gone through (the nightmares), but to also quite literally embody and feel the physical pain of her grief. Rather than relying on the story of the traumatic event itself, these residents-cum-performers must experience haptic grief, a kind of sensory solidarity with Wanda. They are the only ones available—though not necessarily willingly—to bear witness to her pain without demanding it be told through a careful and convenient narrative.”
The Geek Anthropologist 